Waste Reprocessing Infrastructure in Scotland

3. Waste reprocessing infrastructure

Scotland’s reprocessing landscape

The reprocessing sector in Scotland spans a wide range of processes and geographies. These can be highly material-specific and combine local authorities, centralised sites and emerging local enterprises. Individual sites may specialise in a single technology or process, through to sites that provide multiple transfer, sorting, processing and re-processing arrangements where a wide range of activities are undertaken to add value to the materials that flow through them.

Reprocessing activities range from those that repurpose material to provide raw materials or feedstock for the onwards supply chain, through to activities that directly manufacture an end product from reprocessed material. A material may need to go through multiple steps at multiple facilities before it can be reprocessed into a usable product. Each step in the chain from point of collection adds value in different ways. Examples include:

• Sorting household recycling into separate material streams to enhance quality by reducing contamination, sorting textiles into different grades for onward reuse, or sorting glass bottles into different colour streams to enhance manufacturing options.
• Segregating batteries into different chemistries for onward reprocessing.
• Washing, grading and granulating plastics to separate plastic types and grade for different markets.
• Dismantling items of waste electronic items such as fridges into constituent parts/materials for further reprocessing.

Market structure

Materials flow into and out of Scotland for various reasons, including due to existing contracts, the need for specialist facilities, and market economics. The fact material is not reprocessed domestically therefore does not necessarily indicate that infrastructure capacity is not available. Even where domestic capacity does exist, there may be economic or environmental reasons to export material for reprocessing elsewhere in the UK and beyond, which are not assessed in this report.

Reprocessing infrastructure development in Scotland is primarily based on a free-market system of private investment and ownership. However, due to the public nature of much waste service provision, some private facilities are dependent on public contracts and are occasionally owned or constructed with local authority partners. The Scottish Government has also supported investment in waste reprocessing as part of its goal to improve national recycling outcomes, for example through the Recycling Improvement Fund, one of the biggest investments in a generation to modernise recycling in Scotland. The Recycling Improvement Fund has allocated over £66 million to invest in a range of improvements, including more frequent recycling collections, the extension of food and garden waste collections, and boosting Scotland’s capacity to recycle plastic films.

Public sector organisations, particularly local authorities, are responsible for collecting materials from households and operating civic amenity sites such as Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs). Some also choose to offer a business waste collection service. Public sector organisations generally favour a longer-term approach to contracts that balances the need to continually go to market with the delivery of best value for public spend. Some facility developers may seek to secure a public sector ‘anchor contract’ where a guaranteed long-term tonnage is secured. This can be a preferred approach to a merchant facility, which relies on shorter-term contracts.

Within this generalisation, the length of the contract may vary by material type, linked to how it is collected and processed. For example, for dry mixed recycling and food waste, local authorities tend to have long-term (3+ years) arrangements in place with Material Recovery Facilities or Anaerobic Digestion Facilities. In contrast, it is more common to see shorter term contracts (1+ years) in place for materials collected at Civic Amenity Sites such as metals or textiles, with these varying based on the material type and overall contract for the site. Local authorities developing their own facility would direct their materials to that facility, so materials would not be available to the open market for the lifetime of the facility. An example of this would be Glasgow City Council’s MRF, which is due to open in 2026. The City Council received £21M^[24] in funding from the Recycling Improvement Fund to implement a new twin-stream kerbside service and to support the construction of a new MRF which has a minimum 10 year operating life.

Private sector waste management organisations operate across Scotland and vary from large organisations to micro-businesses, and from those that provide a wide range of services to those that may specialise in a particular material type, customer, or location. Private sector organisations generally favour shorter-term contracts with a higher risk-higher return strategy. Timing of contracts is more clearly linked to price fluctuations, with some companies able to stockpile materials to gain optimum returns based on material sales, which can lead to greater inconsistency in material flows.

Geography and site location

Geography will also play a key role in material availability. Scotland has a complex geography, with large centres of population, island and rural populations, and dispersed industry on land, at the coast, and at sea. The ideal site for a reprocessing facility is likely to be close to material arisings or offtake options to reduce transport movements, though other factors like energy availability will play an important role for some materials. This means that reprocessing infrastructure for material commonly collected from households or businesses tend to be close to centres of population, while reprocessing infrastructure for organics and the bioeconomy are often located in more rural areas (see Figures 2-3).

Circular Economy Materials Management Facilities are identified as a National Development within Scotland National Planning Framework 4, meaning that they are priority for delivery (see Chapter 4). However, any new proposals are subject to careful assessment to ensure they provide sustainable low carbon solutions, include appropriate controls, manage any emissions and mitigate localised impacts including on neighbouring communities and the wider environment. Specifically, NPF4’s Zero Waste policy principle sets out the range of factors to be considered for waste infrastructure and facilities development proposals.

Existing reprocessing facilities

For the 15 materials assessed in this report, SEPA site returns data for 2023 list 169 existing waste reprocessing facilities that treat material of Scottish origin on site. This includes sites which clean, sort or treat material for further processing, and those which offer final reprocessing (that is, recycling of material such that it no longer constitutes a waste product). Facilities are mapped by material type in Figure 2, and by activity in Figure 3. These facilities do not include the full range of sites which can potentially handle these materials, such as those that are licensed to receive and transfer material. SEPA Waste Site Capacity tool lists 1,016 sites which are licensed for these activities, omitting sites which carry out only landfill or incineration.

Waste reprocessing infrastructure is concentrated in Scotland’s central belt, though sites are dispersed across the whole of Scotland, particularly transfer stations and sites handling organic wastes. Reprocessing site information is limited for the following materials, though with some activity still taking place: textiles (items are sorted and graded), mattresses (metal recovery), renewable energy installations (wind turbine blade de-construction), and construction materials (secondary aggregate production). There are no facilities in Scotland that reprocess fibre-based composites, according to 2023 SEPA data, although these items are sorted and baled at some Materials Recycling Facilities within Scotland. Any reprocessing facilities for these materials are therefore excluded, though it is possible that sites are not captured in data if they do not require a permit or due to differences in classification. Material-specific maps are provided in Chapters 6-21 where this information is available.

Only sites which recorded "treatment on site" are included. Data is based on SEPA Site Returns for the latest available year (2023), which is not available for all material types. Basemap from © OpenStreetMap contributors, tiles © CARTO.

Only sites which recorded "treatment on site" are included. Data is based on SEPA Site Returns for the latest available year (2023), which is not available for all material types.

Planned and proposed waste reprocessing infrastructure

Scotland has 14 applications for waste reprocessing facilities in the planning pipeline, including those recently consented that treat material on site, across the 15 materials assessed by this report (Figure 4). Facility types include anaerobic digestion and composting facilities (organic waste), aluminium reprocessing, tyres and rubber processing, facilities for processing construction and demolition waste, as well as MRFs and transfer stations. However, a planning application in process does not necessarily indicate that the facility will proceed, even if consented. Applications can take a number of years to successfully pass through planning for a wide range of reasons including the changing circumstances of the developer (funding and viability) and local concerns (increased traffic movements, odour concerns or visual impact). Although a separate processes, there is also an interdependency with environmental authorisations. A facility can be rejected for an environmental authorisation even if planning consent has been granted.

Planned facilities are based on information available in the planning portals for each of the 32 local authorities in Scotland. Circle size is proportionate to planned material capacity.

In terms of broader permit of applications for new sites, in the 2024/25 financial year, SEPA received 13 applications for new waste facilities at Waste Management Licence (WML) and Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) Permit^[25] level, 428 new ‘complex’ exemption applications, and 121 new waste carrier applications. There were also a number of variations and renewals.

From the information provided there are no new reprocessing facilities currently in the public planning pipeline for steel, paper & card, glass, wood, fibre-based composite packaging, textiles, batteries or electronic waste. However, applications could cover mixed materials so these materials could be included within a mixed material stream.

This report does not provide specific information on potential new waste reprocessing infrastructure in Scotland where facilities are not currently captured in the public planning system, as to do so risks disclosing commercially sensitive information. Nevertheless, the Scottish Government and Enterprise Agencies regularly engage with a range of business interests regarding opportunities to invest in Scotland’s circular economy, materials value chain and domestic reprocessing infrastructure. We are aware of potential future opportunities, particularly in plastics reprocessing, the bio-economy, and electronics and battery reprocessing. In particular, the Scottish Government is closely engaged in identifying and progressing commercially and technologically viable proposals for the Grangemouth refinery site, following publication of the ‘Project Willow’ feasibility study that set out options to secure its long-term industrial future (see Chapter 4).